Sarah Shotts Interview

In this episode, we welcome Sarah Shotts to the podcast to talk about why there’s no one-size-fits-all to creativity (or creative capacity) and the importance of practicing INconsistency.

Key Moments: 

• 8:41 - Re-evaluating creative capacity + self-imposed boundaries
• 17:35 - Creative cycles & seasons: Discover Your Creative Ecosystem
• 30:34 - Being intentional about being INconsistent
• 36:40 - Honoring creative intuition (as neurodivergent artists) 
• 47:09 - Embracing the “messy middle” 

About Sarah:
Sarah Shotts is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates fine art to explore her neurodivergent experience as an autistic mother. She’s also a part-time university instructor of theatre and a homeschooling parent. Sarah has authored and self-published Discover Your Creative Ecosystem. And her latest project is a collaboration of artist/mothers from around the globe!

Dive Deeper: 

• Connect with Sarah via her website and Substack newsletter.
• Preorder your copy of Entwined + Ember. This crowd-funded project weaves together stories of creativity and motherhood by women around the globe - and your financial support will help make it happen! 
• Read the 5-year origin story of this project (and take a peek inside the books!)
• Order your copy of Discover Your Creative Ecosystem. 
• Check out Sarah’s archive of (free) online courses including Self Publishing 101 and Crowdfunding 101.

SUBSCRIBE to the UNRAVEL your journey podcast on Substack. Available for free (or for $5 per month).

Transcript

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Kati Overmier (00:00:13):
Welcome to the Unravel Your Days podcast.

Kati Overmier (00:00:16):
We're your hosts, Kati Overmier and Alycia Buenger.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:19):
And we're here to bring you thoughtful conversations about unraveling your soul

Alycia Buenger (00:00:23):
self inside everyday life.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:26):
We'll take a critical look at the self-development industry and explore simple,

Alycia Buenger (00:00:30):
powerful practices you can actually incorporate into your days.

Kati Overmier (00:00:34):
We'll define by example our framework for unraveling to help you envision your soul desires,

Kati Overmier (00:00:40):
embody your experiences,

Kati Overmier (00:00:42):
and enlighten your next steps.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:45):
Join us right here every week as we question whole body wellness and explore our

Alycia Buenger (00:00:50):
daily experience of unraveling who you are and who you choose to be.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:55):
Thank you so much for being here.

Alycia Buenger (00:00:56):
Let's dive in.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:17):
Welcome to the podcast, Sarah Shotts.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:19):
I'm going to give you a bit of an introduction here, and then we'll dive into more about your story.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:25):
Sarah Shotts is a multidisciplinary artist and author.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:31):
She creates fine art that explores her neurodivergent experience as an autistic mother.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:36):
She's also a home educator, which I'm excited to talk about.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:40):
I'm also a home educator.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:42):
And she's a part-time university instructor in theater, which Kati is thrilled to explore.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:47):
That's her subject of, I would say, favorite subject, Kati,

Alycia Buenger (00:01:51):
yeah?

Kati Overmier (00:01:52):
It's definitely high up there.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:54):
High on the list.

Alycia Buenger (00:01:56):
Sarah recently released her first book, Discover Your Creative Ecosystem, that is coming out.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:03):
I think I get mine next week.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:04):
I'm really excited about it.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:06):
She also publishes a weekly Substack called Down the Rabbit Hole that explores the

Alycia Buenger (00:02:12):
creative process,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:13):
her own creative process,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:14):
as well as,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:16):
in general,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:16):
the creative ecosystem and that process.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:19):
Sarah creates out of her backyard studio in Northwest Arkansas.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:22):
You can find more about her and her work at SarahShotts.com, S-H-O-T-T-S, and on Instagram at SarahDShotts.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:32):
And all of these things that we mention in the introduction,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:36):
in the bio,

Alycia Buenger (00:02:36):
throughout the episode, will be linked in the show notes for easy access.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:42):
Welcome to the podcast, Sarah.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:44):
Thank you for having me.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:45):
I'm excited.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:46):
Me too.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:48):
I have wanted to talk to you for a long time, because I met you through Instagram somehow.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:53):
Honestly, don't know how, but I met you through Instagram, and I followed your work for a while.

Alycia Buenger (00:02:59):
So it's fun to actually have a conversation with you.

Sarah Shotts (00:03:03):
Yes.

Sarah Shotts (00:03:04):
I can't remember how long we've been connected,

Sarah Shotts (00:03:07):
but I know,

Sarah Shotts (00:03:08):
I feel like we've had some good back and forth conversations over email,

Sarah Shotts (00:03:12):
like through newsletter responses and,

Sarah Shotts (00:03:14):
um,

Sarah Shotts (00:03:15):
Yeah, I feel like it was maybe a hashtag.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:18):
It could have been.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:19):
Yeah,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:20):
you do a lot of like, hashtag challenges for other like, artist / mothers,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:24):
other people who do similar work.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:26):
So maybe it was through that.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:27):
I have no idea, but I'm really grateful that we connected somehow, through the ethers.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:35):
Okay.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:35):
So I want to start with kind of an introduction to your creative work,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:42):
professionally as well as personally.

Alycia Buenger (00:03:43):
So anywhere you want to start with that,

Alycia Buenger (00:03:46):
how did you get started with creative work and kind of like, what's been the

Alycia Buenger (00:03:51):
inspiration behind your process?

Sarah Shotts (00:04:03):
Okay, so I feel like that's such a massive question.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:13):
My mom was an artist.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:14):
She would never have called herself that.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:16):
She studied art in school, and then she like, put it to the side to become a mother.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:20):
And so we were always doing craft projects.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:23):
She studied art in school, and then she like, put it to the side to become a mother.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:27):
I was writing books like, [at] five years old, and I was also home educated.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:34):
So we were doing all kinds of like, homeschool unit studies and that all had

Sarah Shotts (00:04:38):
I was writing books like, [at] five years old, and I was also home educated.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:44):
So we were doing all kinds of like, homeschool unit studies and that all had

Sarah Shotts (00:04:48):
creativity woven into it, and Girl Scout camp and all the things.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:49):
And so I studied fine art and theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:52):
And in the end, the fine art... I loved like, the process of it.

Sarah Shotts (00:04:57):
But when I went to a four year university at the time, I didn't...

Sarah Shotts (00:05:01):
And in the end, the fine art... I loved like, the process of it.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:03):
But when I went to a four year university at the time, I didn't...

Sarah Shotts (00:05:07):
so I didn't I didn't know this about myself,

Sarah Shotts (00:05:10):
I think we've barely mentioned this in my intro, and I wasn't diagnosed at the time,

Sarah Shotts (00:05:15):
so I didn't I didn't know this about myself,

Sarah Shotts (00:05:21):
And so when I transferred from like, my community college to the art university,

Sarah Shotts (00:05:27):
The fine art department was very competitive and I was, [I] just could care less about that.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:30):
And so when I transferred from like, my community college to the art university,

Sarah Shotts (00:05:32):
Whereas in the theater department, it's very collaborative and they're so happy to have a person!

Sarah Shotts (00:05:39):
And I'm the like [the] stage manager person.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:42):
Whereas in the theater department, it's very collaborative and they're so happy to have a person!

Sarah Shotts (00:05:44):
And I'm the like [the] stage manager person.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:45):
Because everyone wants to be on stage and doing the creative fun stuff.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:49):
And I was doing my creative fun stuff in my art classes and was more than happy to

Sarah Shotts (00:05:53):
support everyone else doing the creative fun stuff in the theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:05:57):
So I, like, right away fit into that.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:00):
And I continued taking enough art classes where I really should have had a double major.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:04):
But because I didn't do the social stuff, they denied me my double major.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:13):
I didn't even get a minor.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:15):
Anyway.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:23):
But at the last minute,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:25):
even though they were classes that I had transferred, and they had accepted,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:29):
when it came to applying for my diploma,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:31):
they then said,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:32):
even though they were classes that I had transferred, and they had accepted,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:32):
well,

Sarah Shotts (00:06:32):
these don't count, because they're too advanced.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:35):
You took things that were too advanced with us.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:37):
So we can't give you an art minor.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:41):
these don't count, because they're too advanced.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:43):
And I'd already applied for an internship.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:45):
I was moving to Maryland to work at a professional theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:49):
And I was like, well, I'm, I'm out of here.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:52):
And by the time you're a senior, you're like, I'm not coming back.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:55):
So forget it.

Sarah Shotts (00:06:58):
But since then, I found it's,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:00):
it's kind of tricky if you want to apply for like art jobs and even like, art shows

Sarah Shotts (00:07:06):
and getting really into the art...

Sarah Shotts (00:07:08):
But since then, I found it's,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:10):
it's kind of tricky if you want to apply for like art jobs and even like, art shows

Sarah Shotts (00:07:13):
and getting really into the art...

Sarah Shotts (00:07:14):
the fine art scene is very,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:16):
I definitely don't have that extra layer of privilege,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:19):
even though I have the education of that...

Sarah Shotts (00:07:22):
I don't have the kind of like,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:24):
I didn't get the golden ticket and the secret handshake for how to enter those

Sarah Shotts (00:07:28):
even though I have the education of that...

Sarah Shotts (00:07:30):
which is really interesting because I feel like I have all of this knowledge of [the]

Sarah Shotts (00:07:33):
fine art world,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:34):
but I don't care to get the golden ticket at this point,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:38):
which is really interesting because I feel like I have all of this knowledge of [the]

Sarah Shotts (00:07:39):
Like,

Sarah Shotts (00:07:40):
I've even considered going back for a master's in fine art.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:44):
And then I got a taste of that, and I was like, OK, this is why I left.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:48):
I remember it was... there's a reason I picked theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:51):
And so I was kind of so much into theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:54):
And then I got a taste of that, and I was like, OK, this is why I left.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:56):
I remember it was... there's a reason I picked theater.

Sarah Shotts (00:07:59):
I've done directing and playwriting.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:03):
And at some point, I kind of like, lost touch with the fine art stuff, because theater consumes your life.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:08):
And you're like in the theater all the time and you barely get to eat and sleep.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:14):
And so I basically lost complete connection with that inner like, artist.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:20):
And at some point, I kind of like, lost touch with the fine art stuff, because theater consumes your life.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:23):
That's kind of where I was around the time I got married.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:25):
And so I basically lost complete connection with that inner like, artist.

Sarah Shotts (00:08:30):
rediscovery of my artist self, and I started kind of doing watercolors and vlogging

Sarah Shotts (00:08:35):
and podcasting and vlogging YouTube like, I kind of came back in through the

Sarah Shotts (00:08:41):
internet creative sphere, and then when David was born, I had so little time that I

Sarah Shotts (00:08:48):
suddenly had absolute clarity on what I wanted to make, and I kind of focused back

Sarah Shotts (00:08:53):
in on those fine art roots and...

Sarah Shotts (00:08:55):
And for like a brief blip of time, I thought I wanted to go into that gatekept world.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:02):
And then I remembered I didn't like the politics of that.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:05):
And I can still make the art I want to make, and I can maybe submit it to a show.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:08):
But if they don't accept me as one of them, and they kind of look down their noses,

Sarah Shotts (00:09:13):
because of certain other things that I do...

Sarah Shotts (00:09:17):
As far as fine art is very much... snooty, as far as what is art and what is craft and what is...

Sarah Shotts (00:09:25):
Like, you shouldn't even do it, because it's beneath you.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:28):
And I just think all creative expression is equal.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:31):
I'm very egalitarian in that way.

Sarah Shotts (00:09:34):
So that's kind of like just a snapshot of, I guess, my creative journey.

Alycia Buenger (00:09:42):
I love that you're talking about this,

Alycia Buenger (00:09:44):
like coming in and out of like, remembering what,

Alycia Buenger (00:09:49):
why you stopped doing something and kind of going in and out of it.

Alycia Buenger (00:09:52):
It reminds me a lot of kind of what we define as unraveling, this kind of like,

Alycia Buenger (00:09:59):
cyclical discovery of yourself.

Alycia Buenger (00:10:02):
You do it over and over again.

Alycia Buenger (00:10:04):
And sometimes you have to keep coming back to the same realizations and...

Alycia Buenger (00:10:11):
Yeah, that seems very relatable.

Alycia Buenger (00:10:15):
Can you talk a little bit more...

Alycia Buenger (00:10:16):
You've mentioned your autism diagnosis,

Alycia Buenger (00:10:19):
but I kind of want to hear from your perspective how your work changed when you

Alycia Buenger (00:10:26):
were diagnosed, and how you kind of maybe thought about your work differently or

Alycia Buenger (00:10:30):
engaged with it differently.

Alycia Buenger (00:10:31):
And then also as a mother, I think that was...

Alycia Buenger (00:10:35):
a really big transition for you from where you were to, you know, now you have a toddler.

Alycia Buenger (00:10:42):
You want to talk about that a little bit?

Sarah Shotts (00:10:44):
So the diagnosis itself, that was about seven years ago at this point.

Sarah Shotts (00:10:50):
I would say that my autism diagnosis had no impact on my creative process... at the time I was given it.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:01):
And that was largely because it's taken me a really long time to

Sarah Shotts (00:11:05):
process that.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:07):
So when I first was diagnosed,

Sarah Shotts (00:11:10):
I changed absolutely nothing about my life or about how I treated myself or my expectations.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:17):
I had knowledge about why things were hard, but I didn't try to make them easier.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:24):
I didn't try to give myself more supports.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:33):
I [got] to that point where I am now, um... where at that point I wasn't a mom yet.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:39):
And so I had all this extra bandwidth.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:41):
I was working from, I was working from home part-time.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:45):
And so I had a lot of extra time and space and privilege and resources and supports

Sarah Shotts (00:11:51):
for myself so that I could really push beyond my capacity.

Sarah Shotts (00:11:56):
And then I had all of this buffer to recharge from that.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:00):
So, like, I remember I went to a blogging conference here.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:05):
It was, it's a small state like, I live in Arkansas.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:09):
So it was a small conference, but it was still a conference.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:11):
I talked to literally every person, because I was doing this Kickstarter project, and

Sarah Shotts (00:12:16):
I was really passionate about it.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:18):
And it was about recording family recipes,

Sarah Shotts (00:12:22):
through video,

Sarah Shotts (00:12:22):
like I was taking cinematic video,

Sarah Shotts (00:12:24):
kind of like wedding photography type stuff,

Sarah Shotts (00:12:27):
but of grandmothers like, teaching their grandkids these recipes.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:31):
And everyone to my face was really supportive of it.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:34):
But when it came time to back the project, so few people followed through.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:39):
And that was like, a really hard thing for me to process.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:42):
So anyway, I went to this weekend, I talked to literally everyone, I was giving out bookmarks.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:48):
And like...

Sarah Shotts (00:12:49):
That was so far beyond my capacity.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:52):
But also like, I made myself do it.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:54):
I was like, shaking.

Sarah Shotts (00:12:56):
I don't, I don't think I knew I was autistic at this time, actually.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:01):
And so I pushed and pushed and I was like, why is this so hard?

Sarah Shotts (00:13:05):
Like, I know I'm introverted, but like this seems really hard and I could barely drive home.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:10):
And when I came home, I just like, slept for a week after that.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:15):
But because my teaching job is online only, like I'm a university instructor, but it's online...

Sarah Shotts (00:13:20):
So I have I had like all that wiggle room to kind of like push, push, push and then recharge.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:27):
And what I found, since becoming a mother is, I don't have the recharge space anymore.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:32):
So I literally cannot push myself that far, because I have to take care of

Sarah Shotts (00:13:37):
another human that relies on me to continue to live.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:41):
And so I cannot behave in the way I used to.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:45):
So before he was around, even once I was diagnosed, I kept doing these things to myself.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:50):
I kept pushing and expecting myself to live up to these neurotypical expectations

Sarah Shotts (00:13:55):
and neurotypical spaces.

Sarah Shotts (00:13:57):
And I just thought it was up to me to like,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:02):
you know,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:02):
do what I could to,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:04):
I mean,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:04):
even down to the clothes that I was wearing,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:07):
I wouldn't be comfortable.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:09):
And so I was like contributing to my own overstimulation

Sarah Shotts (00:14:13):
in a way that was really unhealthy,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:15):
but I couldn't see it at that time, because that's how I'd always been.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:20):
So the diagnosis,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:23):
and this is why I don't necessarily advocate that people need a diagnosis, because

Sarah Shotts (00:14:28):
the diagnosis itself did nothing for me.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:32):
Like I have a piece of paper.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:33):
If someone doesn't believe me, I can show them.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:35):
They never asked to see it.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:38):
You know, I'm an adult.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:39):
Like if I was a kid, you know, in school, sometimes you can show the paper and get extra supports.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:43):
But as an adult, that money and that paper has done nothing for me other than to validate that identity.

Sarah Shotts (00:14:50):
But even once the professional told me I had [autism] or that I was that,

Sarah Shotts (00:14:57):
it took me a long time to kind of internalize it and come to identify that way again.

Sarah Shotts (00:15:04):
and not see it because I'd always seen my autistic traits as my character flaws.

Sarah Shotts (00:15:12):
And I find it really interesting because I've been reading,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:15):
rereading a lot of young adult fiction over the pandemic, because it's like cozy and

Sarah Shotts (00:15:20):
comforting to like, reread the Dragon Riders of Kern and like, the Chronicles of

Sarah Shotts (00:15:26):
Prudane, and like, all of these old stories that I love,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:31):
like Alana and,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:32):
um,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:33):
Tamara Pierce, like Lady Knight, Lady, Lady Knight books.

Sarah Shotts (00:15:38):
And it's interesting when I see these neurodivergent traits portrayed in fiction as

Sarah Shotts (00:15:44):
flaws that then the characters overcome.

Sarah Shotts (00:15:47):
So I'm really interested in writing some fiction that is more neurodiversity-

Sarah Shotts (00:15:53):
affirming in that way,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:55):
because very often it's like,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:56):
okay,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:57):
this character has social anxiety,

Sarah Shotts (00:15:59):
but they just push through it, and then they never experience that again.

Sarah Shotts (00:16:03):
Or this character is really sensitive.

Sarah Shotts (00:16:06):
And so I kind of want to turn that inside out and be like,

Sarah Shotts (00:16:10):
okay,

Sarah Shotts (00:16:11):
what if instead of saying this is a bad thing about a person,

Sarah Shotts (00:16:14):
this is just who you are and learning to accept that is like the growth arc instead

Sarah Shotts (00:16:21):
of overcoming the thing.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:25):
That's so beautiful.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:26):
It makes me want to cry.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:28):
I feel like my girls really are drawn to books where the character doesn't overcome,

Alycia Buenger (00:16:36):
where she works through something that's really challenging and that's just part of

Alycia Buenger (00:16:41):
her life.

Alycia Buenger (00:16:42):
So I wonder how that might impact,

Alycia Buenger (00:16:45):
not just kids who are neurodivergent and diagnosed [with] that,

Alycia Buenger (00:16:48):
but kids who are neurotypical and engage in a world and want to engage in a world

Alycia Buenger (00:16:53):
where

Alycia Buenger (00:16:54):
everyone is welcome and comfortable, you know, I think it really matters for everyone.

Sarah Shotts (00:17:00):
I think there is a big shift in the way we're telling stories.

Sarah Shotts (00:17:03):
Now I'd love to hear some of the books that they're enjoying, because these are definitely,

Sarah Shotts (00:17:08):
you know,

Sarah Shotts (00:17:08):
back the classics, and yeah,

Sarah Shotts (00:17:12):
I love seeing more, all different types of diversity and inclusion in stories.

Sarah Shotts (00:17:18):
Now I think there's a definite positive change there.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:22):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:23):
That would be really fun to write a children's book, for you to write a children's book.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:28):
I'm excited to see if that goes anywhere.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:32):
I am curious, because you have written a book.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:34):
You are an author.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:35):
You are a published author, which is really exciting.

Alycia Buenger (00:17:39):
Some of what you've talked about with your autism diagnosis and within motherhood is this sort of...

Alycia Buenger (00:17:48):
this is from the outside in,

Alycia Buenger (00:17:51):
would say is like a reframe of some of your early childhood experiences or even

Alycia Buenger (00:17:56):
your adult experiences, of kind of shifting the lens a little bit and reframing what

Alycia Buenger (00:18:03):
was going on, where that wasn't a character flaw,

Alycia Buenger (00:18:06):
that was a part of your experience...

Alycia Buenger (00:18:09):
Does that kind of play into the creative ecosystem that you talk about?

Alycia Buenger (00:18:15):
Because it's not like a...

Alycia Buenger (00:18:17):
it's like an embrace of the cycles and seasons and the whole experience and the ins

Alycia Buenger (00:18:24):
and outs and the weeds versus the linear,

Alycia Buenger (00:18:27):
like,

Alycia Buenger (00:18:28):
here's the two spaces you can be in or,

Alycia Buenger (00:18:31):
you know,

Alycia Buenger (00:18:32):
does that play into?

Sarah Shotts (00:18:33):
Very much so.

Sarah Shotts (00:18:34):
So I feel like, I really struggled in the gap between being in academia as a student

Sarah Shotts (00:18:43):
and then trying to navigate the world as a professional.

Sarah Shotts (00:18:47):
Because when you're a student, you have all of these structures and buffers built in.

Sarah Shotts (00:18:52):
I always took the maximum amount of credit hours, but there was a maximum.

Sarah Shotts (00:18:58):
And there were breaks, there were holiday breaks, and there were set class time and then other times.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:05):
And so when I kind of went from being in grad school to having all the time in the world,

Sarah Shotts (00:19:12):
I completely filled it with work.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:16):
So at that time, I was just trying.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:18):
I had a very, very part-time teaching university job, but it was one class.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:25):
So at the time, all I could afford was this tiny little log cabin.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:29):
I lived in a little two-room log cabin for a year before I was married.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:34):
And then I came up here and Nathan is the primary breadwinner here.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:41):
It, in a way, took the pressure off, but also like, I wanted to contribute to the family.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:46):
So I spent those next few years being like, OK, I have these degrees.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:50):
How do I use them?

Sarah Shotts (00:19:51):
And I applied for all kinds of different jobs.

Sarah Shotts (00:19:54):
And I really leaned into the wedding photography, because that was a way I could use

Sarah Shotts (00:19:58):
my creative skills that people were willing to pay.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:01):
And so I...

Sarah Shotts (00:20:03):
I really burnt myself out kind of learning about marketing and learning,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:07):
like that's kind of how I got into blogging was trying to market my wedding

Sarah Shotts (00:20:11):
photography business.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:13):
But it turns out I'm not passionate about weddings.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:15):
So I found myself blogging about day-to-day adventure.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:18):
And then suddenly that wasn't transferred, like weirdly that wasn't transferring into wedding clients.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:25):
And so I basically... that gap between

Sarah Shotts (00:20:30):
grad school and having a kid was me burning myself out with trying so hard to

Sarah Shotts (00:20:38):
pursue like a professional,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:41):
like there was no balance of inspiration and wellbeing.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:45):
It was just like sitting at my computer all day long,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:48):
either learning about a thing or trying to network,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:52):
trying to fix my website,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:54):
every tiny little thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:20:55):
Um,

Sarah Shotts (00:20:58):
Can you remind me what the question was?

Sarah Shotts (00:21:00):
Cause I know I was going somewhere.

Alycia Buenger (00:21:04):
Um, how your experience with autism and neurodivergence....

Sarah Shotts (00:21:09):
Yes.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:11):
So that is how I was experiencing life before I was a mother.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:17):
And then when David was born, I decided I should reread The Artist's Way.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:24):
And, um,

Sarah Shotts (00:21:24):
I love Julia Cameron.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:26):
It was the third time I've read the book.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:27):
Like, I read it in college.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:29):
I read it as a newlywed and I knew I wanted to read it as a new mom, because I saw

Sarah Shotts (00:21:35):
my own mom kind of put all of her personal creative interests to the side.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:39):
And I wanted to be conscious of that as a mother.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:44):
But when I was reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way,

Sarah Shotts (00:21:47):
it was not at all a structure that would support me at that time.

Sarah Shotts (00:21:51):
It was too rigid, and it expected too much, because I was a neurodivergent mother

Sarah Shotts (00:21:58):
with chronic pain and chronic illness that... all of those things I was trying to process.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:05):
And so I was like, okay, I cannot literally...

Sarah Shotts (00:22:08):
journal every day.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:08):
I cannot leave my kid and go out and have an adventure.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:13):
I just need a nap.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:14):
I need to sleep or I need to lay in a hot bath.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:18):
What she's telling me I need is not what I need.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:21):
And that was really new for me, because I'd always looked outside myself at what I should do.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:25):
And I think, this is where I was going with the burnout thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:30):
In the creative world, there's a lot of... follow this structure to be a professional.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:37):
You must do exactly these three steps, or you should wake up early and then have

Sarah Shotts (00:22:42):
these routines and have these structures to be a success.

Sarah Shotts (00:22:49):
And so it was a little bit frightening,

Sarah Shotts (00:22:54):
actually,

Sarah Shotts (00:22:54):
to lose the stability of grabbing onto someone else's structure and just riding

Sarah Shotts (00:23:00):
that, because I'm a really good rule follower.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:04):
Like neurodivergent has this spectrum between people who love to break the rules

Sarah Shotts (00:23:08):
and people who love to follow the rules.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:10):
And I've always been the follow the rules person.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:13):
But follow the rules was not healthy for me.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:16):
And so I'm suddenly identifying a lot more with the people who break the rules.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:20):
And actually, they're in a much healthier place sometimes, because they're doing what's right for them.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:25):
So like releasing the idea that Julia Cameron knew more about what I needed to do

Sarah Shotts (00:23:30):
for my creativity than I did

Sarah Shotts (00:23:33):
was like, really big for me.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:36):
And so I was writing this,

Sarah Shotts (00:23:37):
I found myself writing the book I wanted to read, because it didn't exist, about

Sarah Shotts (00:23:41):
creativity and motherhood,

Sarah Shotts (00:23:43):
specifically new motherhood.

Sarah Shotts (00:23:45):
I needed someone to tell me that my art was important and that I could make time

Sarah Shotts (00:23:50):
for it,

Sarah Shotts (00:23:52):
but for that to be in a much more flexible,

Sarah Shotts (00:23:56):
inconsistent manner.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:00):
And so it turns out the first chapter of that book...

Sarah Shotts (00:24:03):
Also,

Sarah Shotts (00:24:04):
as I wrote the book,

Sarah Shotts (00:24:05):
I knew I couldn't tell other moms what they needed to do, because we all needed

Sarah Shotts (00:24:09):
different things.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:10):
This is what... it sounds so simple,

Sarah Shotts (00:24:12):
but honestly was mind boggling for me that we as humans need different things.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:18):
Like it was like an actual discovery for me at that time.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:22):
And so the first chapter of that creative motherhood book was called Discover Your Creative Ecosystem.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:29):
And I broke down creativity into an ecosystem and matched it with like natural metaphors.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:37):
So like sun is physical energy, air.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:43):
And now that I should have wrote that down in my notes.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:49):
I should have pulled it up.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:52):
So like sun is physical energy.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:54):
Water is mental health.

Sarah Shotts (00:24:56):
And then you have like, the decomposers

Sarah Shotts (00:24:59):
and everything that inspires you.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:02):
And so everything has this connection, but it's not like creativity is just when you're making it.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:08):
This was like... part of the realization for me was I need to find my way of doing it.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:13):
And then the other side of the coin was,

Sarah Shotts (00:25:16):
it's not just about drawing,

Sarah Shotts (00:25:18):
like actually sleeping is also tending to my creative ecosystem.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:24):
It may be that what I need is like, I have to tune in and actually listen to myself and to what I need.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:32):
And that is not at all how, how I interacted with creativity before David was born.

Sarah Shotts (00:25:39):
And so that was like a really massive shift that I'm really just kind of digging into.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:47):
I love that you bring this out in, not just your book that's coming out,

Alycia Buenger (00:25:52):
but like on Instagram and in your Substack.

Alycia Buenger (00:25:54):
You bring this out over and over again,

Alycia Buenger (00:25:56):
because I think some of us are aware that like, sleep is important.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:02):
It helps you like, integrate a lot of different things.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:05):
And when we don't make it a conscious...

Alycia Buenger (00:26:08):
shift in our brains, it's still not a priority.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:12):
So it's kind of like that..

Alycia Buenger (00:26:13):
If you're not producing some kind of creative piece,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:17):
then you're not a creator or you're not an artist or you're not doing it the right way.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:22):
And so to talk about it in the way that you do as like, an ecosystem where you need

Alycia Buenger (00:26:26):
to nurture all of these different parts,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:30):
I think it feels really powerful,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:32):
and I'm excited to dive into the book,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:34):
partly because I've also read The Artist's Way, because it was recommended to me.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:40):
My oldest daughter was,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:41):
I don't know,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:42):
two or three,

Alycia Buenger (00:26:43):
and I remember reading it, because I really wanted to get into writing every day again.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:47):
And I hated the book, because it was so rigid.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:52):
There was like, you have to do this every day, and you have to go on an artist date.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:55):
And I was like, I don't have the time, the energy, the money.

Alycia Buenger (00:26:59):
This is impossible.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:00):
And it felt like, if this is the best way or the only way and it's not accessible to me,

Alycia Buenger (00:27:07):
how am I going to get to where I want to be?

Alycia Buenger (00:27:10):
And so I think it's really special to share your experience of like,

Alycia Buenger (00:27:15):
that didn't work for me either,

Alycia Buenger (00:27:16):
but there is a way forward.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:18):
And I can't tell you the way forward,

Alycia Buenger (00:27:20):
but I can show you that there's like, some kind of puzzle you might have to put

Alycia Buenger (00:27:25):
together for yourself.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:27):
And it's like, an art and a science.

Alycia Buenger (00:27:29):
I think there's something really beautiful about that.

Sarah Shotts (00:27:32):
Yeah, I'm really excited to hear that...

Sarah Shotts (00:27:35):
people's experience of reading the book....

Sarah Shotts (00:27:37):
I felt like it could have been...

Sarah Shotts (00:27:40):
I actually ended up,

Sarah Shotts (00:27:43):
you know,

Sarah Shotts (00:27:44):
it was like one chapter of a bigger book was how,

Sarah Shotts (00:27:47):
how it was birthed.

Sarah Shotts (00:27:48):
And I had to keep myself from turning it into like, a thesis, because I could have

Sarah Shotts (00:27:54):
made it so much more complicated than it was.

Sarah Shotts (00:27:57):
Like,

Sarah Shotts (00:27:57):
I think there could be a whole other book where other people shared their specific

Sarah Shotts (00:28:01):
experiences and

Sarah Shotts (00:28:03):
about their creative ecosystems, and we could dig into how they all look different

Sarah Shotts (00:28:07):
and all these different ways that it can be.

Sarah Shotts (00:28:09):
So I had to be really conscious to be like, okay, this is short and simple and sweet.

Sarah Shotts (00:28:14):
And like, maybe that is what I needed as a new mom.

Sarah Shotts (00:28:16):
Like I didn't need it to dig so deeply,

Sarah Shotts (00:28:20):
but I'm really curious to hear back what people,

Sarah Shotts (00:28:22):
what people resonate with and what...

Sarah Shotts (00:28:25):
how their ecosystems look.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:29):
Maybe that's something we could review on the podcast, Kati.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:32):
I'm super pumped.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:34):
By the time this episode goes live,

Alycia Buenger (00:28:36):
November,

Alycia Buenger (00:28:37):
middle of November,

Alycia Buenger (00:28:38):
the book will be out into the world,

Alycia Buenger (00:28:40):
right?

Alycia Buenger (00:28:40):
And available still for purchase.

(00:28:43):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:43):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:44):
So we will link all of that information below.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:46):
And if you haven't yet purchased the book, there is, you have like this gorgeous video on your page.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:52):
It's like sarahshotts.com/books I think, but I'll

Alycia Buenger (00:28:56):
be for sure when I put this in the show notes.

Alycia Buenger (00:28:58):
And you have this like, video of you kind of going through the books.

Alycia Buenger (00:29:02):
You can see the inside of it and [you're] talking about it.

Alycia Buenger (00:29:04):
And yeah, so you can kind of get a sneak peek if you're interested and listening.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:11):
Yes.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:11):
And the workbook, too, because I'm a big journaler.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:13):
And so...

Sarah Shotts (00:29:14):
I almost put like, the workbook prompts in the book itself,

Sarah Shotts (00:29:18):
but I ended up making like, a fully illustrated hardcover workbook where you can

Sarah Shotts (00:29:22):
work through it.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:24):
And it has all of the like... I didn't do the illustrations.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:26):
This is like a big thing for me.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:28):
So like, before David was born, I would have 100% [done the illustrations].

Sarah Shotts (00:29:32):
It would have been all my photographs, all my illustrations.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:35):
But what I've realized is, I don't have to do everything myself.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:38):
Like I can pay another artist, and it can be more of a collaborative thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:29:45):
And so the photographs are not mine, and the illustrations are not mine,

Sarah Shotts (00:29:51):
but they help pull everything together.

Alycia Buenger (00:29:55):
Yeah, I like that.

Alycia Buenger (00:29:57):
I like the collaborative piece of it, too.

Alycia Buenger (00:29:59):
I think that, I assume this might be in your book,

Alycia Buenger (00:30:02):
but you talk a little bit about consistency and inconsistency.

Alycia Buenger (00:30:08):
You have a podcast episode about this exact topic.

Alycia Buenger (00:30:12):
Intentional inconsistency.

Alycia Buenger (00:30:14):
Can you talk a little bit about how that relates to your individual creative ecosystem,

Alycia Buenger (00:30:22):
as well as your kind of experience as a neurodivergent creator and a neurodivergent mom?

Alycia Buenger (00:30:29):
Like how do those things work together?

Sarah Shotts (00:30:34):
Intentional inconsistency was actually like homework that was given to me by a therapist.

Sarah Shotts (00:30:41):
And by the psychologist who diagnosed me with autism.

Sarah Shotts (00:30:47):
So she noticed like, the reason I pursued the diagnosis is, I was suddenly really

Sarah Shotts (00:30:53):
struggling, and I was burned out.

Sarah Shotts (00:30:55):
And she noticed that I was taking on all of these things and I couldn't even see

Sarah Shotts (00:31:00):
the option to be inconsistent.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:03):
Now,

Sarah Shotts (00:31:03):
I know this is not everyone's experience, and it may not be relatable to some people,

Sarah Shotts (00:31:07):
but this is, this is how I came to it.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:10):
So I would join an Instagram photo challenge, and I would literally do it every single day.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:18):
The creator of the challenge wouldn't do it every single day, but I would do it every single day.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:26):
And I would take on all of these like... people would invite me to do certain opportunities and...

Sarah Shotts (00:31:33):
And I wouldn't even see the option of saying like, hey, this isn't a good time.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:37):
Maybe we should do this later.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:39):
Or, you know, I love to do National Novel Writing Month.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:42):
I wouldn't even see the option to not write one day if I needed to,

Sarah Shotts (00:31:46):
like,

Sarah Shotts (00:31:46):
take care of my mental health or something.

Sarah Shotts (00:31:49):
And so for me, I was like so rigidly in this,

Sarah Shotts (00:31:55):
you know compulsive like, rigidity that I couldn't see the possibility that I could

Sarah Shotts (00:32:03):
be inconsistent; it was like inconceivable to me to be inconsistent, and so the

Sarah Shotts (00:32:09):
psychologist was like, okay I want you to practice intentional inconsistency, and I

Sarah Shotts (00:32:16):
relate the word practice to like

Sarah Shotts (00:32:18):
yoga.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:19):
It's like something... it's not something like you practice your handwriting.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:24):
It's like a practice.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:25):
It's your art practice, your writing practice, your yoga practice.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:30):
And so I began a practice of intentional inconsistency.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:35):
And when my son was born,

Sarah Shotts (00:32:36):
it brought it to a whole other level,

Sarah Shotts (00:32:38):
because while I thought being inconsistent was like,

Sarah Shotts (00:32:41):
OK,

Sarah Shotts (00:32:41):
I'm going to miss a day on this Instagram challenge.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:44):
Suddenly it was like everything exploded, and I could barely make it through the day.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:50):
And so my capacity to be so rigidly consistent just evaporated overnight.

Sarah Shotts (00:32:58):
And I was glad I had laid the groundwork on that before he was born.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:03):
So I was a little bit prepared for it.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:07):
But the level at which I could consistently follow through with things was so

Sarah Shotts (00:33:13):
different than what I had experienced before.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:17):
And as we just talked about,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:19):
when I reread The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:21):
and she's like,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:22):
you must read,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:23):
write at this time of day, this many pages every single day, or you are a failure.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:28):
I was like, wait a minute.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:29):
I actually don't agree with that

Sarah Shotts (00:33:31):
Miss Cameron for once.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:34):
Like, I felt like I wanted to stand up for myself and be like, it's not that something's not worth doing!

Sarah Shotts (00:33:40):
If you can't do it every day,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:42):
like we have to take care of,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:45):
you know...

Sarah Shotts (00:33:45):
she also has points in the book where she's talks about taking care of your body

Sarah Shotts (00:33:49):
and taking care of your mental health.

Sarah Shotts (00:33:51):
But yeah,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:52):
she,

Sarah Shotts (00:33:52):
you can see her privilege coming through where she was not pushed beyond her

Sarah Shotts (00:33:57):
capacity to the point where she could have this consistency.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:01):
And I have had that privilege in the past,

Sarah Shotts (00:34:03):
but suddenly,

Sarah Shotts (00:34:05):
and especially [when] I became a mother...

Sarah Shotts (00:34:07):
David wasn't even one year old when COVID hit.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:11):
And so some of our,

Sarah Shotts (00:34:14):
some of the supports that I could have had as far as within the community and our

Sarah Shotts (00:34:18):
family helping,

Sarah Shotts (00:34:19):
like all of that was really dialed back.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:22):
And it was just us.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:24):
And it was really hard.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:25):
And so I kept talking about this intentional inconsistency,

Sarah Shotts (00:34:29):
both as a reminder to myself and also to connect with other people, because I could

Sarah Shotts (00:34:34):
suddenly get it.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:36):
Whereas I was always the person who was like, wait a minute, I set a deadline.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:40):
Why are you not sending me this guest blog post?

Sarah Shotts (00:34:43):
Like, what is what is going on?

Sarah Shotts (00:34:45):
I'm like, oh, they were struggling to get through the day.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:48):
I get it now.

Sarah Shotts (00:34:49):
Like, I have so much more compassionate empathy for

Sarah Shotts (00:34:52):
other people's life experience where I realized before it was just privilege that I

Sarah Shotts (00:34:57):
had this space and time that I could dedicate to things.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:04):
And so that's why I talk about intentional inconsistency,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:07):
meaning that even if you can't do something literally every day,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:10):
it doesn't mean it's not worth doing at all.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:13):
And so I journal, but I don't do it every day.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:16):
I don't do it every week.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:17):
I might go through chunks of time where I do it

Sarah Shotts (00:35:23):
every day or multiple times a day,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:25):
like whenever I need to and I have the capacity for that,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:28):
but also as a multi-passionate,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:30):
I might find that what I need to express is in a different medium.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:34):
And she doesn't have space for that either, Julia Cameron, because she's a writer.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:38):
She's like a capital W writer.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:40):
Well, and she's a filmmaker, but those things kind of like go [hand in hand].

Sarah Shotts (00:35:43):
She's a writer in that realm as well.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:45):
And so I think it's different when you're a multi-passionate that,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:49):
yes,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:49):
writing can be a tool for all kinds of creative people.

Sarah Shotts (00:35:52):
But we also,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:53):
especially if we have limited time and capacity,

Sarah Shotts (00:35:56):
might be wanting to engage with other mediums.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:00):
Like I did a lot of pottery when David was young and someone could watch him for me,

Sarah Shotts (00:36:05):
because it was very therapeutic,

Sarah Shotts (00:36:07):
like physically working the clay.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:10):
And it was much less about me expressing an idea.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:13):
And it was more about the physical act of like disconnecting from my mental script

Sarah Shotts (00:36:19):
and just like being present,

Sarah Shotts (00:36:21):
like almost a mindfulness activity.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:24):
Art can be self-expression and can be mindfulness and it can be all of these different things.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:31):
And no one can tell you what art needs to be for you.

Sarah Shotts (00:36:34):
Only you know that.

Alycia Buenger (00:36:36):
Can you talk about, I don't know if I had written this down or not.

Alycia Buenger (00:36:40):
Can you talk about kind of, the choice to use art in that way where it is like a

Alycia Buenger (00:36:45):
therapeutic practice for you personally?

Alycia Buenger (00:36:47):
And also, you are an artist who makes money with the work that you do,

Alycia Buenger (00:36:51):
or at least some of the work that you do.

Alycia Buenger (00:36:52):
And kind of that... for me,

Alycia Buenger (00:36:54):
it's a very like uncomfortable

Alycia Buenger (00:36:57):
still, push-pull between what I want to keep for myself,

Alycia Buenger (00:37:00):
what I want to make for fun and...

Alycia Buenger (00:37:02):
versus what I'm comfortable [with] and desire to sell.

Alycia Buenger (00:37:06):
Like, is that, is that a game that you, or, um, I don't think game's the right word.

Alycia Buenger (00:37:11):
Is that a thought that you kind of, attention that you explore in your work?

Sarah Shotts (00:37:19):
So what I've realized is that I work best intuitively.

Sarah Shotts (00:37:25):
And if I allow myself to go with that intuition and...

Sarah Shotts (00:37:28):
So this is where, before David was born,

Sarah Shotts (00:37:30):
I would have an idea and I would rigidly pursue it to the like, exclusion of all

Sarah Shotts (00:37:37):
other things,

Sarah Shotts (00:37:37):
including like eating and moving my body and getting out of the computer chair and

Sarah Shotts (00:37:42):
going outside and breathing fresh air.

Sarah Shotts (00:37:50):
But because I thought there was something like...

Sarah Shotts (00:37:53):
this is where it comes back to seeing the autism as like a character failing...

Sarah Shotts (00:37:57):
And this is almost more of an ADHD trait than like shiny object syndrome,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:01):
like where you,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:02):
you want it,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:03):
you're,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:03):
you know,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:06):
you've heard,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:06):
you've heard the critique that it's like,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:08):
oh,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:08):
you can't be starting all these new projects.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:10):
Like you have to stick with one.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:11):
And so I had internalized this to such a point that I was,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:15):
I had,

Sarah Shotts (00:38:16):
I killed my creativity by focusing so much on one project, and...

Sarah Shotts (00:38:22):
that I was no longer inspired.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:23):
I no longer felt creative.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:26):
Before David was born, I just had this epiphany.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:30):
And I wrote a blog post called Embracing My Inner Renaissance Woman.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:34):
Because, as [I was] trying to be a professional creative, I thought I had to pick one thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:41):
And so I was trying to be [a] wedding photographer.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:43):
And I couldn't even do it.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:45):
Like you heard me telling the story about trying to do these

Sarah Shotts (00:38:49):
recipe films that had nothing to do with wedding photography.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:52):
I was writing this blog about adventure.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:53):
That was my best effort to niche down.

Sarah Shotts (00:38:56):
And I was still like, fragmented in all these ways that made no sense.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:01):
And so even when I was trying to force myself to do this, I was wildly unsuccessful, because

Sarah Shotts (00:39:08):
I was not making money at it.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:10):
I was losing,

Sarah Shotts (00:39:11):
I was hemorrhaging money, because I was spending all of these investments to be

Sarah Shotts (00:39:16):
professional on a Photoshop membership and on all of this stuff that I thought I

Sarah Shotts (00:39:21):
needed to be professional.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:24):
And I was... but I was losing my life.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:30):
I, because I was burning myself out and I wasn't following my creative passion and intuition and

Sarah Shotts (00:39:37):
people weren't connecting with the work, because I was just sitting in front of the computer all day.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:41):
And so I had this epiphany that I needed to work in different mediums, and I needed

Sarah Shotts (00:39:46):
to allow myself to do that.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:47):
And I started a podcast called Kindle Curiosity.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:51):
And I had a really fun,

Sarah Shotts (00:39:53):
like one season before David was born,

Sarah Shotts (00:39:55):
where I talked to lots of different creative people.

Sarah Shotts (00:39:58):
And I explored this idea of letting myself be...

Sarah Shotts (00:40:02):
If I had an idea, I was going to do the thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:40:04):
I wasn't going to keep pushing down my own ideas for the sake of niching and

Sarah Shotts (00:40:09):
marketing and branding and consistency.

Sarah Shotts (00:40:12):
And ironically,

Sarah Shotts (00:40:13):
since I've started to let myself do that,

Sarah Shotts (00:40:17):
both to work intuitively and to be wildly inconsistent,

Sarah Shotts (00:40:20):
I have actually been much more successful.

Sarah Shotts (00:40:24):
I have had profitable creative projects for the first time ever,

Sarah Shotts (00:40:30):
since I started being inconsistent and intuitive, and so I just, when I feel like I

Sarah Shotts (00:40:38):
want to make pottery, I make pottery; if I finish enough to sell, and I have the

Sarah Shotts (00:40:42):
energy to take photos, I might put it up for a pop-up shop; and I no longer try to

Sarah Shotts (00:40:47):
say, okay this is my business plan for the year, this, these, this is what I'm going to

Sarah Shotts (00:40:52):
release... I just make things when I'm inspired to make them.

Sarah Shotts (00:40:56):
And I photograph them when my back pain isn't flaring up to the point that I can physically take photos.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:04):
And I might tell people about it when I remember.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:07):
And that's the part I think I can improve on is continuing to mention things that

Sarah Shotts (00:41:13):
exist, because that's where my little airy fairy,

Sarah Shotts (00:41:16):
like I talk about it one time, and then I forget to mention it [ever again].

Sarah Shotts (00:41:19):
And I've been very intentional about that with my book, because I really want it.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:24):
to connect with people.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:25):
And I really want it to like, I wrote it for people.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:28):
I didn't, it's kind of different in that way.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:30):
Like I wrote the book for people to read where sometimes I make the pottery just to make the pottery.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:36):
And so selling it is kind of like a bonus.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:39):
Um,

Sarah Shotts (00:41:40):
so with my book,

Sarah Shotts (00:41:41):
I've tried to be very intentional about continuing to mention it and continuing to

Sarah Shotts (00:41:45):
talk about it.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:47):
Um, and I want to hear back from the other side as people start to read it.

Sarah Shotts (00:41:51):
Does that answer your question?

Alycia Buenger (00:41:53):
Yes, I think so.

Alycia Buenger (00:41:55):
And I'm very curious.

Alycia Buenger (00:41:57):
I want to like transport this little bit of the conversation and share it with the marketing world.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:03):
I think so many people that I work with get really lost,

Alycia Buenger (00:42:07):
like following all of those rules,

Alycia Buenger (00:42:09):
the shiny object syndrome.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:10):
If you've heard like any marketers say like, don't follow the shiny objects.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:14):
I think it hinders so many entrepreneurs to the point where they just give up.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:19):
And I think not even just creative entrepreneurs.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:22):
I think people who use their creative souls for business and to make money.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:29):
I think when we start to follow those rigid kind of masculine structures of marketing,

Alycia Buenger (00:42:34):
we lose the kind of spark that keeps us going.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:40):
And then we just give up or we don't make the money we need to make.

Alycia Buenger (00:42:43):
And it's my hope....

Sarah Shotts (00:42:47):
I think particularly for neurodivergent creators and artists,

Sarah Shotts (00:42:52):
like we thrive in this way,

Sarah Shotts (00:42:54):
like our brains do not follow a neurotypical structure.

Sarah Shotts (00:42:57):
And so if we're given a neurotypical marketing plan, it is not going to work.

Sarah Shotts (00:43:01):
And what I found is, the more that I let myself be myself,

Sarah Shotts (00:43:06):
the people that are meant for me find me and connect with me.

Sarah Shotts (00:43:09):
And so like, I don't know, 90% of my people are probably neurodivergent, whether they know it or not.

Sarah Shotts (00:43:17):
And more and more of them are messaging me like, hey, tell me about this thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:43:22):
Can you talk a little bit more about autism or neurodivergence?

Sarah Shotts (00:43:25):
Or I think I might be ADHD, because instead of... it's so great, because instead of

Sarah Shotts (00:43:32):
hiding ourselves,

Sarah Shotts (00:43:34):
if we show who we are,

Sarah Shotts (00:43:35):
then we can find these points of connection with others.

Sarah Shotts (00:43:38):
And that's, I think that has been the real magic in making and creating and sharing in this way

Sarah Shotts (00:43:46):
versus before when I had my head, nose to the grindstone I was like wedding,

Sarah Shotts (00:43:50):
photography, wedding photography, whoops I didn't mean to do that side project,

Sarah Shotts (00:43:54):
wedding photography, wedding photography, oh this isn't even matched together like...

Sarah Shotts (00:43:58):
when I actually talk about the things I'm passionate about, people are connecting,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:02):
people are buying like, my goal with my book was to just break even, because I've

Sarah Shotts (00:44:07):
never even broken even like, I tended to invest all of these things before David was

Sarah Shotts (00:44:13):
born

Sarah Shotts (00:44:14):
I would invest in these projects, and then they wouldn't sell.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:16):
I'm like, okay, well now I have a kid.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:19):
So I'm trying not to waste as much money, because things are tighter.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:22):
And so it's like, okay, if I make this goal to like just break even, I'll be happy.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:27):
And then I exceeded that goal.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:28):
And I'm like,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:28):
I had a profitable creative project that people are actually passionate about and

Sarah Shotts (00:44:33):
want to connect with.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:34):
And it's,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:35):
it's because like, it came from the heart, and I shared it in a way that...

Sarah Shotts (00:44:39):
and I was clear also with like,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:41):
this is why the prices,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:43):
I had a lot of,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:43):
um,

Sarah Shotts (00:44:44):
feedback that people really related [to] or appreciated the way I broke down why the

Sarah Shotts (00:44:49):
price is what the price was on the book.

Sarah Shotts (00:44:53):
And yeah, to make that goal like, to break even, at least I knew where I was going with it.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:01):
Yeah,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:02):
I watched your marketing process,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:04):
you know,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:04):
through mostly...

Alycia Buenger (00:45:06):
I'm on Instagram sometimes,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:07):
sometimes not.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:08):
But you're very... It's not just like... what people call like, authentic marketing

Alycia Buenger (00:45:12):
is not always authentic.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:14):
[But] you really take people behind the scenes of your...

Alycia Buenger (00:45:17):
creative process and your creative ecosystem.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:19):
And I think,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:21):
I don't know that that was like your marketing plan,

Alycia Buenger (00:45:24):
but I think that is one thing that does draw a lot of people to you.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:27):
You're very open about why and how and what you did.

Alycia Buenger (00:45:32):
And yeah, I've learned a lot from watching you do this.

Sarah Shotts (00:45:37):
I feel like that's just letting myself be autistic,

Sarah Shotts (00:45:40):
because there's this idea that I tried to live up to before of what's professional,

Sarah Shotts (00:45:45):
and like what's appropriate to share and what's oversharing.

Sarah Shotts (00:45:48):
And,

Sarah Shotts (00:45:49):
I just thought about like a couple of people that I knew wanted to read my book, and

Sarah Shotts (00:45:52):
I knew they wanted to write books, too.

Sarah Shotts (00:45:54):
And I thought like, Hey, let me just explain this.

Sarah Shotts (00:45:57):
Like, okay, I'm probably over-explaining.

Sarah Shotts (00:45:59):
Like, why [does] this book cost this much?

Sarah Shotts (00:46:01):
Like the, it costs a lot to print books in a small run.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:05):
Like I just, I don't want to make less money on a hardback than I do on the ebook.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:08):
And that's how I chose to price the book.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:10):
And so I just said that in the video and I've had so many people message me

Sarah Shotts (00:46:15):
specifically about like,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:16):
thank you for sharing that because I,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:18):
when you're looking at books that are mass produced and then you're looking at this,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:21):
you're like,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:22):
wow,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:22):
that seems really high.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:23):
And so to counter, counteract that I've also included like the ebook and the audio

Sarah Shotts (00:46:28):
book with the hardcover purchase, because I'm self-publishing.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:32):
So I have like, the freedom to do it in the way that I want to.

Sarah Shotts (00:46:36):
And so, yeah, like I didn't,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:39):
I've tried not to think of the word marketing, because I have so much baggage with

Sarah Shotts (00:46:44):
like what that means,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:45):
but I just tried to think about like,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:47):
how do,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:48):
how do I share this?

Sarah Shotts (00:46:49):
Like thinking about these kinds of people that I know want to read it and kind of

Sarah Shotts (00:46:54):
breaking it down on that,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:55):
like one-to-one level really helped me,

Sarah Shotts (00:46:58):
which I know is also a marketing strategy,

Sarah Shotts (00:47:00):
but there's like,

Sarah Shotts (00:47:02):
there's a lot of other stuff that I just kind of like let go as far as,

Sarah Shotts (00:47:07):
as far as that goes.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:09):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:10):
Well, congratulations on your first like, profitable project.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:14):
I'm really excited about it.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:17):
I have like, one kind of final question.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:19):
And then if Kati,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:20):
you have other questions or if you want to bring something else up,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:23):
we can definitely do that.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:26):
So you and Kati both have talked to me about... maybe it's because you're both neurodivergent.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:32):
I have a good feeling that that's what it is.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:35):
You're kind of like,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:37):
comfortable almost with things being messy and with having these multiple projects at the same time.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:46):
And with that intentional inconsistency that you're talking about,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:49):
that it's kind of messy,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:51):
you know,

Alycia Buenger (00:47:51):
allowing yourself to be inconsistent with something that matters to you.

Alycia Buenger (00:47:55):
And I kind of want to know like, how you engage with what you call the messy middle

Alycia Buenger (00:48:02):
in like all of your titles as a neurodivergent,

Alycia Buenger (00:48:05):
as a mother,

Alycia Buenger (00:48:05):
as a creator,

Alycia Buenger (00:48:06):
as a woman,

Alycia Buenger (00:48:07):
How do you sit inside that messy middle experience of creating?

Sarah Shotts (00:48:17):
So I'm going to start from where I came to that term.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:22):
So I started using the term the messy middle as a permission slip to myself to make an imperfect podcast.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:31):
Because before David was born, when I had Kindle Curiosity, it was like a one-hour podcast.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:36):
I would spend five hours editing.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:39):
I would edit out every um, every pause.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:42):
It was so tightly edited.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:43):
Everyone sounded like they were a professional public speaker.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:47):
We all sounded amazing.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:49):
But it took every moment of my life.

Sarah Shotts (00:48:51):
And now I look back on that as like squandered time when I could have been doing so

Sarah Shotts (00:48:58):
many other things when I didn't have a kid in the house.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:01):
I could have been going on adventures.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:02):
I could have been writing books.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:04):
I could have been doing all this stuff.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:05):
And I was like sitting here trying to make probably two neurodivergent people sound neurotypical,

Sarah Shotts (00:49:12):
like to be honest,

Sarah Shotts (00:49:13):
because the people that I was drawn to interview,

Sarah Shotts (00:49:16):
like we're not the most eloquent people.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:18):
And so trying... but I made us sound great in editing.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:22):
So I had a really hard time.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:25):
I wanted to podcast again after my son was born, but I knew that was completely off the table.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:30):
And he was the kind of baby where like, I had to be holding him like, he was not the

Sarah Shotts (00:49:35):
kind that would sleep in a bouncer or anything like that.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:44):
So to allow myself permission to podcast without editing...

Sarah Shotts (00:49:50):
And so I rebranded my podcast as The Messy Middle.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:54):
And I think that's probably when you connected to it, Alycia.

Sarah Shotts (00:49:58):
And I recorded an episode about intentional inconsistency.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:03):
And the benefit is like, I have been practicing non-edited ramble podcasts for years

Sarah Shotts (00:50:12):
on my Patreon,

Sarah Shotts (00:50:13):
but they were private to my patrons.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:15):
So I have been building up this muscle.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:18):
Like before I started podcasting,

Sarah Shotts (00:50:20):
I probably couldn't have sat here and just run off my mouth to you guys like this.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:25):
Like I have always been a sit back and listen person.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:30):
But podcasting has really been like, an exposure therapy for like social anxiety and

Sarah Shotts (00:50:39):
like, getting my words out of my mouth,

Sarah Shotts (00:50:41):
that kind of thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:42):
And so I had been doing this kind of like ramble podcast to my patrons every month for several years.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:49):
And I was like, okay, well, I know I can do that.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:52):
And I could release that on a podcast.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:55):
And so I knew I wanted to come back to podcasting.

Sarah Shotts (00:50:57):
I was like, what if I let myself do that and just let it be messy?

Sarah Shotts (00:51:02):
And because of my perfectionism, I had to go through this whole rebrand to allow that.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:10):
And then I realized, because I was like a sleep deprived COVID mom at the time,

Sarah Shotts (00:51:15):
someone else is using that podcast name.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:18):
So I think after I released like, three or four episodes,

Sarah Shotts (00:51:21):
I had to go back, and I rebranded it as Kindle Curiosity.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:25):
But I kept the spirit of the messy middle.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:28):
And I also talked about it as a hashtag on Instagram, just trying to get other people to share more.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:34):
Like it can apply to more than that, but I came to it through podcasting.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:38):
So it's also just sharing more like the mess of life and the middle of the creative

Sarah Shotts (00:51:44):
process isn't always tidy.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:46):
Like we don't always have skills straight away.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:48):
Right now I'm trying to learn how to illustrate, because

Sarah Shotts (00:51:51):
I've written a first draft of a picture book about autism, but I need illustrations for it.

Sarah Shotts (00:51:59):
And I reached out to a couple of autistic illustrators and they're busy.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:02):
And I'm like, well, I don't want to wait for the perfect time.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:04):
And I don't want to go through the official publishing channels.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:09):
Like I just want to get this out in the world.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:11):
I think it's important.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:12):
And so I'm like, what if I explore like, how I might illustrate it myself?

Sarah Shotts (00:52:17):
So I have like,

Sarah Shotts (00:52:20):
I made, I can't remember the name of it right now,

Sarah Shotts (00:52:22):
but I made a whole separate Instagram feed just for that.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:25):
That's like a mess of just me learning how to draw like expressions and faces... is

Sarah Shotts (00:52:32):
something I've never really had classes in.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:34):
You know, it might not necessarily be the best Instagram idea to have that on my main feed.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:41):
So I just made this side project where I could like post whatever I wanted to.

Sarah Shotts (00:52:45):
And it is OK if it wasn't, you know, no one's going to be...

Sarah Shotts (00:52:49):
great you're not going to be great at something the first time you try, and we need

Sarah Shotts (00:52:52):
more space for that on the internet, and that's kind of I think what connected me to

Sarah Shotts (00:52:56):
Claire [venus] that you had on the podcast recently is, I was posting these messy pictures

Sarah Shotts (00:53:01):
of like my kids toys all over the floor.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:04):
And everyone else is like these perfectly wooden, beautiful toys on shelves, and everything's immaculate.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:10):
And I'm like, there's Duplo blocks all over our living room floor.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:15):
And Claire is like, I love this.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:16):
This is beautiful.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:18):
These moments are the ones we want to remember.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:21):
And so connecting over that is how we came up with the Magic Mundane project where

Sarah Shotts (00:53:26):
we exchange photos and videos of motherhood every day.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:30):
And we're cooking up a way for people to we're going to like match up collaborators

Sarah Shotts (00:53:36):
for that probably in the new year, because we're too close to the holidays right now.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:41):
But that's something that we're cooking up.

Sarah Shotts (00:53:43):
So all of that kind of, that's kind of like my vision of the messy middle is

Sarah Shotts (00:53:48):
allowing things to be messy,

Sarah Shotts (00:53:50):
allowing ourselves to be beginners, and

Sarah Shotts (00:53:53):
allowing things to be imperfect,

Sarah Shotts (00:53:55):
even if in a perfect world,

Sarah Shotts (00:53:57):
that's not how we would prefer to present them.

Sarah Shotts (00:54:01):
And weirdly,

Sarah Shotts (00:54:03):
the less perfect I allow things to be when I release them,

Sarah Shotts (00:54:06):
the more connection I seem to have with other people.

Alycia Buenger (00:54:10):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:54:12):
I wonder if one of the other things,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:15):
I can't think of it exactly,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:16):
but one of the other things you had said in this conversation about your son made

Alycia Buenger (00:54:22):
me think that

Alycia Buenger (00:54:24):
becoming a mother and having a young child to take care of every day....

Alycia Buenger (00:54:27):
Like that is something that you've talked about being the consistent thing that you do.

Alycia Buenger (00:54:32):
You are consistently a mother to your son.

Alycia Buenger (00:54:35):
I just wonder if like,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:37):
for me at least,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:38):
and maybe for you both as well,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:40):
like having a child or caretaking responsibilities or like connections with other people,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:46):
like that's kind of what anchors us into these mundane moments that are pretty

Alycia Buenger (00:54:53):
messy and imperfect and,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:56):
um,

Alycia Buenger (00:54:57):
engaging with those a little bit more consciously than Instagram really encourages

Alycia Buenger (00:55:01):
us to do.

Alycia Buenger (00:55:02):
Maybe that's where we allow ourselves to be in that messy middle experience.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:11):
Yes.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:11):
The toddler brings the mess to you.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:13):
So you have a choice.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:15):
You can see the beauty of it or you can get really frustrated.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:22):
And both things happen to me, obviously, but it helps if you can see the beauty in it.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:28):
It helps you to like, I can't think of the word, but like deal with it.

Sarah Shotts (00:55:33):
It helps you like process.

Alycia Buenger (00:55:38):
You can embrace and...

Alycia Buenger (00:55:40):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (00:55:41):
Do you have other questions, Kati?

Alycia Buenger (00:55:43):
Do you have other thoughts?

Kati Overmier (00:55:45):
I have lots of thoughts, but I don't know

Kati Overmier (00:55:50):
necessarily if they're going to fit with the episode.

Kati Overmier (00:55:55):
Um, I, I just kind of find your journey fascinating and I, I think it's really cool what you're doing.

Kati Overmier (00:56:05):
Um, and that it sounds really familiar to my life experience.

Kati Overmier (00:56:12):
Um, so that's really cool.

Kati Overmier (00:56:14):
I feel like I did have a question, but I forgot it, because there you go.

Kati Overmier (00:56:18):
That's my brain for you.

Kati Overmier (00:56:20):
No, this has been a fun convo.

Alycia Buenger (00:56:23):
One of the things that,

Alycia Buenger (00:56:24):
like Sarah said,

Alycia Buenger (00:56:25):
that reminds me of you and our conversations together is that piece around

Alycia Buenger (00:56:33):
consistent marketing and how you can be intentionally inconsistent with the work

Alycia Buenger (00:56:38):
that we do with Unravel.

Alycia Buenger (00:56:39):
We've been very conscious about allowing it to be kind of messy and allowing...

Alycia Buenger (00:56:44):
us to kind of filter this work through what we need in mind, body, soul together.

Alycia Buenger (00:56:49):
And we're a collaboration.

Alycia Buenger (00:56:51):
So there's like lots of like moving pieces,

Alycia Buenger (00:56:54):
but following all the rules of the online marketing world just doesn't work for us.

Alycia Buenger (00:57:00):
And I think part of that is because you have a neurodivergent experience of creating.

Alycia Buenger (00:57:05):
I think part of it's just that we're both mothers and we require a little bit more flexibility, but

Alycia Buenger (00:57:11):
I think there's a lot to think about with what you've said, Sarah.

Alycia Buenger (00:57:14):
So I'm kind of excited to put this out into the world and have some conversations

Alycia Buenger (00:57:19):
about it with more people.

Kati Overmier (00:57:23):
What Sarah was saying when she was saying that,

Kati Overmier (00:57:24):
actually,

Kati Overmier (00:57:25):
it's funny that you bring that up,

Kati Overmier (00:57:26):
Alycia,

Kati Overmier (00:57:27):
is when we were reading The Element...

Kati Overmier (00:57:33):
There's this one blurb in the, of the million of interviews that this guy did for this...

Kati Overmier (00:57:39):
And it was like this very prolific,

Kati Overmier (00:57:41):
um,

Kati Overmier (00:57:41):
book publisher, and like, his like advice to his,

Kati Overmier (00:57:47):
um,

Kati Overmier (00:57:48):
I guess like he kind of took someone under his wing, was [saying] don't do what everyone else

Kati Overmier (00:57:52):
is doing.

Kati Overmier (00:57:53):
Like, and that's where, where you will get the most success.

Kati Overmier (00:57:58):
Because if you're doing something that no one else is doing, um,

Kati Overmier (00:58:01):
then people tend to take more notice of that.

Kati Overmier (00:58:03):
And so that kind of reminded me of that,

Kati Overmier (00:58:05):
Sarah,

Kati Overmier (00:58:05):
where you're like,

Kati Overmier (00:58:07):
okay,

Kati Overmier (00:58:07):
so this rigid way of thinking is not working for me.

Kati Overmier (00:58:10):
And so therefore I'm going to go and do what I need to do.

Kati Overmier (00:58:14):
And then success found you when you finally allowed yourself to do what everyone else wasn't.

Kati Overmier (00:58:21):
And people have connected more to that.

Kati Overmier (00:58:24):
And so I think that's a really cool and beautiful example.

Sarah Shotts (00:58:30):
Yeah, for sure.

Sarah Shotts (00:58:31):
I love that book, too.

Sarah Shotts (00:58:33):
Thank you, now.

Alycia Buenger (00:58:35):
We just did a review where Kati hated it.

Alycia Buenger (00:58:39):
But Sarah's an academic.

Alycia Buenger (00:58:43):
So there you go.

Kati Overmier (00:58:45):
She is the only audience that I would ever recommend that book to.

Kati Overmier (00:58:53):
Yeah, I have a lot of things to say about that.

Kati Overmier (00:58:56):
And

Kati Overmier (00:58:58):
I still have a lot of things to say about that book.

Kati Overmier (00:59:01):
There you go.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:02):
I haven't read it in a long time.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:04):
It was like before my autism diagnosis.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:06):
But what I liked was that he was saying we all kind of... the ecosystem thing,

Sarah Shotts (00:59:10):
like the theme of the book is that we all have our own thing.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:15):
We can just find it.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:17):
Now, the tone of the book might not resonate with every reader.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:20):
So that sounds like maybe what happened.

Kati Overmier (00:59:23):
My, my biggest problem with the book is like, that was what the book was supposed to be about.

Kati Overmier (00:59:29):
But at the end of the book,

Kati Overmier (00:59:30):
like if I didn't know what I already love to do,

Kati Overmier (00:59:35):
I had no more insight on how to find it.

Kati Overmier (00:59:38):
I was just told your life will be better if you do find it.

Kati Overmier (00:59:42):
Oh, okay, cool.

Kati Overmier (00:59:44):
But what if I don't know how things can, I still don't know.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:50):
So he wrote a sequel, because I think a lot of people had that reaction, called Finding Your Element.

Sarah Shotts (00:59:57):
But I actually enjoyed that book less than the first one, probably because I already know mine.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:05):
I'm going to be honest right now and tell you I was a little bit afraid to come on

Sarah Shotts (01:00:08):
this podcast, because I listened to your review of Glennon Doyle's...

Sarah Shotts (01:00:12):
I can't remember the name.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:14):
Untamed.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:16):
That.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:16):
Untamed.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:16):
And I was like, oh, dear.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:18):
They're so critical.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:22):
Oh, no.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:25):
You should listen to our review about Hunt, Gather, Parent, because we say nothing but praise...

Alycia Buenger (01:00:33):
That's funny because that episode is one of my favorites that we've done, the Glennon Doyle episode.

Alycia Buenger (01:00:38):
We do at the end confirm that we think she's a really valuable speaker in the world.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:43):
I feel like, I mean, I don't know how much older I am than you guys.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:49):
But I think one thing you said was like, maybe there's like a generational difference in experience.

Sarah Shotts (01:00:55):
And I felt like for me, I related more to her generational experience than perhaps yours.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:01):
So, yeah.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:02):
Yeah.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:04):
I haven't felt critiqued today.

Alycia Buenger (01:01:10):
Oh, no, that was never our intention.

Alycia Buenger (01:01:12):
I'm glad you felt uncritiqued.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:18):
So I did think of something like, some connective tissue that I kind of skipped over.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:23):
So I don't know.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:25):
Don't spend too long thinking about where to plug this in,

Sarah Shotts (01:01:28):
but you could just leave it here or you could put it elsewhere if it makes sense.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:33):
So one thing I did want to talk about is that while my diagnosis didn't change

Sarah Shotts (01:01:38):
anything about my creative process,

Sarah Shotts (01:01:41):
realizing that my son was autistic changed everything.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:46):
And not only about how to parent,

Sarah Shotts (01:01:50):
but how to treat myself, because everything was different when I knew that my son

Sarah Shotts (01:01:57):
was also neurodivergent.

Sarah Shotts (01:01:59):
And so everything changed from like,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:02):
I have to make myself conform to these neurotypical standards and like push beyond what I'm able.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:08):
So there was like one level of, I didn't have the capacity to do that anymore.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:12):
But then realizing that he would have these experiences in life,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:17):
his own neurodivergent experiences made me realize that I don't want to model,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:22):
even if I did have the resources to push past my capacity,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:26):
that it's actually possible,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:27):
much more powerful to say, you know, I need these things.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:31):
My brain is different.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:33):
And that is just a neutral fact.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:34):
It's not a flaw.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:35):
It's not anything bad about me.

Sarah Shotts (01:02:38):
And so his diagnosis actually changed a lot more about my creative practice and the

Sarah Shotts (01:02:44):
way that I walk through life and allowing myself to follow these different rabbit

Sarah Shotts (01:02:48):
holes and my intuition and not try to stay tight within these rigid,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:55):
niched expectations,

Sarah Shotts (01:02:57):
that it's amazing what we learn from motherhood that we can't really see when it's just us.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:05):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:07):
That's a really beautiful way to talk about it, I think.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:10):
And it actually reminds me of Glennon's book a little bit, and the way that she

Alycia Buenger (01:03:13):
talks about kind of her devotion to being a feminist when she realized that she

Alycia Buenger (01:03:20):
wasn't kind of embracing that for her son specifically.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:23):
Yeah.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:25):
Yeah, I remember that.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:27):
Yeah, that story.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:30):
Well, thank you so much for coming and being on the podcast.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:34):
And we've been kind of trying to schedule this for a little while, so I'm so glad it worked out today.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:40):
Thank you so much.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:43):
Thanks for having me.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:45):
Of course.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:46):
Anytime.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:46):
We'd love to have you back.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:48):
There's lots more we can talk about.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:50):
We didn't even dig into the home education, and we just skimmed the surface on the neurodivergence.

Sarah Shotts (01:03:55):
So there's lots more.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:57):
Yeah.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:57):
We'll have to do a part two.

Alycia Buenger (01:03:58):
We'll have to try and schedule that.

Kati Overmier (01:04:00):
Yeah.

Kati Overmier (01:04:01):
Yeah.

Kati Overmier (01:04:02):
For sure.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:02):
Yeah.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:02):
And if I ever start having guests, I'll have to have you on my podcast.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:06):
Yes.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:07):
That'd be fun.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:08):
On a little hiatus.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:09):
Because basically when David was in school, he was bringing home something...

Sarah Shotts (01:04:13):
We were sick constantly.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:15):
So I just didn't have the voice to podcast for the last two years.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:20):
So we're kind of like coming back to a space where it might be possible to,

Sarah Shotts (01:04:25):
to pursue that creative outlet again.

Sarah Shotts (01:04:27):
So, yeah.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:29):
Yeah, that would be fun.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:30):
Thank you so much, Sarah.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:32):
And I guess we will see y'all next week.

Kati Overmier (01:04:37):
This will be fun for the end of the podcast, for the bloopers.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:40):
Yeah, shove that at the end.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:42):
That doesn't need to be in here.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:43):
Okay.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:53):
Introductions are so horrible for me, which we've talked about previously.

Alycia Buenger (01:04:56):
This is the second podcast I've introed, so yay me.

Alycia Buenger (01:05:03):
But yeah, you can talk about inconsistencies if you want to.

Alycia Buenger (01:05:06):
Okay.

Sarah Shotts (01:05:09):
Yeah, I'm going to just call it due over on that one.

Kati Overmier (01:05:14):
I feel like we're so similar, Sarah, we should be friends.

Kati Overmier (01:05:17):
We should.

Kati Overmier (01:05:18):
A little bit.

Kati Overmier (01:05:28):
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Kati Overmier (01:05:33):
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Alycia Buenger (01:05:46):
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Alycia Buenger (01:06:25):
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Alycia Buenger (01:06:28):
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Alycia Buenger (01:06:37):
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